Tag Archives: Hip Hop Wedding DJ

Jagged Edge Featuring Run-DMC Let’s Get Married

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Jagged Edge Featuring Run-DMC Let’s Get Married is one of my favorite remixes ever! How bad can it be to have Run DMC beats and vocals with Let’s Get Married lyrics and Jagged Edge doing his thing? It is easy to not pay homage to Run DMC since they seem to have become the forgotten pioneers. It is too bad because they found the beauty in simplicity and staying true to what they wanted to say and produce beats that were danceable, strong and hard to ignore. They never veered from the roots of Hip Hop as a movement, not just a musical genre. Social awareness and sharing the The Struggle were what they did best and did not really feel the need to re-invent themselves as something different.

“Every turning point in American music has its originator, its progenitor, its King.  The blues had W.C. Handy and jazz had Louis Armstrong.  Swing had Benny Goodman and bebop had Charlie Parker.  Rhythm and blues had Ray Charles and rock and roll had Elvis Presley.  Punk rock had the Stooges and disco had Barry White.  And hip-hop had Run-DMC – and always will, with their uncompromised vision and attitude, as laid out on their formative albums and singles, serving as the DNA of rap music for more than two decades and counting.”  Run-DMC Website

As a professional Wedding DJ, Jagged Edge Featuring Run-DMC Let’s Get Married is one of the Wedding Introductions songs that is most fun to play. It is high energy without being over-the-top, gets everybody rockin’ and has the wedding message right there for all to hear.  I am glad that when I recommend Jagged Edge Featuring Run-DMC Let’s Get Married to Brides and Grooms, they often get excited if they happen to appreciate Hip Hop and R&B.

Jagged Edge Featuring Run-DMC Let’s Get Married Music Video

DJ Mystical Michael Rhode Island DJ & NY DJ

Lupe Fiasco Superstar

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I was turned on to Lupe Fiasco when I was participating in a training for youth educators on utilizing Hip Hop in the classroom. The training was incredible. The teachers were excellent! I was able to use some of the techniques in the middle school that I was coordinating an after-school program for at-risk youth. The kids loved it. The funny part is I think I got more from the training, than the kids I brought the stuff back to. But that is not anything new for me. Lupe Fiasco Superstar was one of the songs we dissected and praised.

“To intervene and provide effective affordable assistance, the Hip-Hop Education Center (HHEC) was formed to fully promulgate and explore the potential of Hip-Hop pedagogy. Officially launched in June 2010 under the auspices of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University, and a generous donation from the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

The mission of the HHEC is to cultivate and support Hip-Hop scholars, teaching artists, cultural workers and activists, and social entrepreneurs to professionalize the field of Hip-Hop Education and inform the larger education sector. It achieves this through research and evaluation of programs, development of standards and best practices, documentation and archiving, community outreach and programming, leadership and teacher training, teacher placement, policy and advocacy development, and social enterprising.”

 

I find Lupe to be an inspiring writer and has the gift of being able to write and perform often hard-core songs with a light, Top 40 appeal and sound. Lupe Fiasco Superstar is an excellent example of this.

 

One of the last nights of the week-long training, the group of instructors decided they were all going to check out Lupe Fiasco, since he was in town performing not too far away. I passed. I wish I had taken their advice and gone to the show. Enjoy!

Lupe Fiasco Superstar Music Video

DJ Mystical Michael Rhode Island DJ & NY DJ

Older, Old Skool Professional Hip Hop DJ

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I remember when we first heard Sugar Hill Gang. It was Rapper’s Delight on Sugar hill Records. It was a relatively new sound that was produced on their own label. I do not know if they knew it at the time but the choice to lay down tracks on their own label was the beginning of what has shaped the music industry since.  I am certain they did not know they would fuel a musical genre that no one outside of Brooklyn and The Bronx thought would last more than a few years, forget about owning the business for the next 30+ years!

This was their first single and it was the first hip hop single to reach the Billboard Top 40 and they were the first hip hop performers on American bandstand, many folks believe RUN-DMC were first but it was actually Sugar Hill Gang. They were sued for sampling the beats from Chic’s Good Times, the first of many lawsuits that the Hip Hop business has had to encounter. They settled out of court and Nile Rodgers was afforded part o fall royalties forward. They were from Englewood, NJ and not NYC as most people assume.

 

They seem to have lost recognition for their pioneering music to others artists like RUN-DMC who were more famous and successful It is like Hip Hop refuses to acknowledge where it came form although it has had such a short history for a musical genre. Today, Old Skool means five or ten years ago, not the roots of a musical style that is diverse in its breath and focus based on a social movement of changing attitudes and actions to the greater good of all people. It is sometimes hard to see this in the music that is called Hip Hop today, although very danceable and fun.

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DJ Mystical Michael Rhode Island DJ & NY DJ